


1986

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [7]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Rodney McKay +/ John Sheppard, Rodney travels back in time to be there when a young John really needs someone."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1986

Rodney knew he probably shouldn’t have been poking around the device, but his Russian so-called colleagues had been really cagey about it, so he was curious.  
  
He knew he’d made the wrong choice as soon as the world went white and then reassembled itself...as a kitchen. A private kitchen, not an industrial one from the looks of it (too small, too cozy), but there were uniformed servers with fancy trays of hors d’oeuvres and petit fours ducking in and out of the kitchen rapidly.  
  
So the device was a transport device. Awesome. Rodney looked down at the thing on his wrist - it looked like an ugly bulky digital watch - and there were numbers counting down on it. He knew this much - as soon as the numbers ran down to zero, the “session” ended. Apparently this device was some kind of transporter.  
  
No one seemed to notice Rodney in all the chaos, so he ducked out of the kitchen - and into a pantry. Wrong door. He was making all the wrong choices today. To make matters worse, the pantry was already occupied.  
  
By a sullen-looking teenage boy with floppy dark hair and bright gray-green-gold eyes. He was wearing a dark suit and a conservative white button-down shirt. He had taken off his tie and, by Rodney’s estimation, was a little drunk. He didn’t look older than sixteen.  
  
“Don’t like the party either?” he asked. Something about the way he said _party_ made Rodney think that the food wasn’t for a celebration at all.  
  
“Not really my scene,” Rodney said hesitantly. “I’m not really sure how I ended up here.”  
  
“Pretty sure a lot of people aren’t sure how they ended up at this shindig either,” the boy said. He was only slurring a little, but his eyes were bloodshot. The flask he was holding looked expensive. “But that’s the old man for you, showing off his connections even now.”  
  
So this was a house. The boy’s father’s house.  
  
“Good on you for not wearing a black suit,” the boy said, raising the flask at him. “Way to stick it to the man.”  
  
Rodney looked down at himself. He’d been wearing a polo shirt and slacks and his old SGC jacket. “I’m sorry. Like I said, I didn’t expect to be here.” He glanced at the device. Judging by the numbers counting down, he had a couple of hours here. He had to lay low and hope no one arrested him, because that would go badly with the SGC, and also him disappearing from lock-up would totally freak out the local LEOs, and also go even worse with the SGC.  
  
“I think it’s stupid that most of the people out there are wearing black anyway,” the boy continued, flipping off the pantry door. “I mean, ninety percent of them aren’t even here for my mother anyway. They’re here because Patrick Sheppard is the CEO and they want to remind him that they’re loyal and useful the next time a spot on the board of directors opens up.”  
  
Black clothes. Mother.  
  
Rodney had accidentally crashed the boy’s mother’s funeral. He had to get out of here. Someone would definitely know he didn’t belong. Except...except the boy didn’t know he didn’t belong.  
  
“It’s pointless being loyal and useful to that man,” the boy said, struggling to sit up. “If you don’t do exactly what he wants, when he wants, you might as well not exist.”  
  
Rodney had a sense that the boy, who was clearly upset, was speaking from personal experience. “What is it he wants from you?”  
  
“Be a good Sheppard Man. Go to Harvard. Get an MBA. Join the Family Business. Marry the Right Woman.” The boy snorted. “Been the plan since I was fourteen.”  
  
“Is that what you want for yourself?”  
  
The boy blinked at him. “Did you know my mom?”  
  
“I regret to say I’ve never met her,” Rodney said honestly.  
  
“She asked me the same thing. She was the only one who ever did.” The boy leaned in and peered at him. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Meredith,” Rodney said, which was what he used whenever he didn’t want anyone to recognize him, although that was stupid, because his first name was far more memorable than his preferred name.  
  
The boy frowned. “That’s a last name.”  
  
“Well, it’s a first name now.”  
  
“Also, isn’t it a girl’s name?”  
  
“It means ‘lord of the sea’.”  
  
“...That would be a stupid name for a girl.” Then the boy sat back again. “I don’t want to go to Harvard. I hear Stanford has a great math program, and good ties with Cal Tech.”  
  
“You’re interested in math?”

The boy raised his eyebrows in challenge. “Yeah. Combinatorics.”  
  
Rodney had limited exposure to combinatorics, mostly with regards to statistical physics. But he said, as casually as he could muster, “What topic? Infinitary, matroid theory, partition theory?”  
  
“Combinatorial design theory, actually.” Grudging respect lit in the boy’s eyes. “So, would you go to Stanford instead of Harvard if your dad wanted you to go to Harvard?”  
  
“I can’t repeat what I said to my father when he told me where to go to college and I said no, because it’s rude to speak ill of the dead,” Rodney said, and the boy flinched but nodded for him to go on. “But the short answer is...yes. I’d go to Stanford. I went to Cal Tech to get my PhDs, and they have a great mathematical department. Graeme Peel is brilliant.”  
  
The boy frowned. “Graeme Peel, the Fields Medical Nominee?”  
  
“Winner,” Rodney said.  
  
“He’s been nominated, but the winners haven’t been announced yet,” the boy said, and Rodney looked down at the device on his wrist again, a sinking feeling heavy in his chest.  
  
“So, not to sound crazy, but what year is it?”  
  
“Nineteen eighty-six,” the boy said. “Why?”  
  
Rodney swore in French. The boy raised his eyebrows, amused. Of course he spoke French. Rodney pushed himself to his feet. “Well, it’s been fun, er -”  
  
“John,” he said, standing up as well. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were here by mistake, were you? How did you get here?”  
  
“To be honest -” Rodney winced - “I”m not a hundred percent sure. And even if I could explain it, well, it’s classified.” He reached for the pantry door. “So I’m just going to find somewhere to hide until I go back to where - and when - I came from.”  
  
John caught his wrist. “No. Stay. Please. I - if the kitchen staff saw you come in here last, they won’t think I’m still in here. And I can’t go back out there. I can’t look at everyone’s faces and see their stupid pity and - and -” His breath hitched, and Rodney realized he was going to cry.  
  
But he scrubbed a hand over his face, expression fierce, and no tears fell, but his eyes were wet. Then he licked his lips and gazed up at Rodney with an expression he could only describe as coquettish and said, “So, tell me about the future.”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Rodney said, flustered, because _jailbait_. “I’m a physicist and have studied many theories of time travel, and in all of them, telling you about the future is either pointless or dangerous.”  
  
“Then...tell me what Cal Tech is like.” John tugged, sat back down on a case of canned cream of mushroom soup, and Rodney resumed his seat on a footstool someone probably use to reach higher shelves.  
  
“Okay. Um.” Rodney hadn’t had much of a social life in college or grad school. But he did know where all the best places to get coffee were, and the best spots to study, and the places that served the best beer. John drank in every detail with wide eyes, and Rodney wished he was better at being sympathetic and comforting. They talked for what seemed like hours, but could only have been two.  
  
When the device on his wrist beeped, Rodney said, “I think I’m going now.”  
  
“Goodbye, Meredith,” John said. “Maybe one day I’ll see you again.”  
  
Rodney was sure that was impossible, but he said, “Maybe,” and then his world went white, and reassembled itself as the lab in Siberia, and Danisenko was yelling at him, and Rodney hoped that John had gotten the future he wanted.


End file.
